Wow, that's a concentrated approach! My gobosorcerer approach was a lot more generic, with the same Mysterea opening (except 1/2 magic and Mystic balance first), and sticking with her to the bitter end, but only converting stuff later to ding carefully (because no swift hands, obviously). Thanx for sharing.

And @Darvin: What I ment to say by Mysterea being self-sufficent, and then listing a "dedicated spellcaster" approach feedback is that, basicaly, Mystera seems to be able to turn anyone into a dedicated spellcaster, and with both the retaliation and resistance bussines being solveable, there isn't any reason not to do it, from a lazy munchkin perspective. With stress on lazy. I'm just wondering whether it sould be so rewarding in terms of sucess? Or if it's just my footwork allowing for it (game mechanics certanly do, I'm not sure on skill requirement parts).

I mean, it's certanly intended - it's what the berserker gold challenge is all about, except I'm not sure if it was ment to work this well against bosses who look like they are the only thing that should make you consider every other option.

Lujo wrote:1) Codex + Earthmother is brutaly unbalanced. It's also really, really fun, and one half of it is a vicious reward item.

No, it's really not. It works, and only on a few maps. The plant spam from Entanglement is terrible on any of the 'true' vicious dungeons, and Entangle can't even affect most of the bosses. Codex is otherwise subpar and Entanglement is situational and I don't want to see either of them get gutted because of the total non-issue of people being able to combine them to beat non-maze Hard level maps.

2) The fireball retaliation changes did 2 things, one of them good, one of them bad. Good one was opening the field for different strats in various places, which is awesome. Bad one was it kind of, sort of, effectively removed 50% of the purely logical reasons you wouldn't want to take a spellcaster on every run. Not really sure what to think, but it's both there.

Seriously, you are the only person who ever thinks this way. A resist-stacking Monk can still beat almost anything. A GG Rogue can handle anything (after the Absolution nerf, this is the only GG health stacking strategy that still stands out, which , ugh). The Punchomancer Wizard is a versatile approach that has an answer to every threat in his magic bag of tricks. The only person that ever thinks that strategies that work reliably trivializes the rest of the game is you. The rest of us switch it up because we're not betting real money on these games and finding multiple solutions is the part that is fun.

1) Didn't say nerf anything, except thet moving burnig help to bloodmage might be warranted, and probably is. I also suggested buffs, and was simply being honest about the power level of some stuff, or the potential power level.

2) (Codex + EM) = Unbalanced, Codex = vicious reward => has no place or weight in a discussion on the state of spellcasting. It's only "not good enough" on vicious if the boss is in a subdungeon, or if he has huge magic resists, or both. No nerfs required, but buffs to priests, monks and EM should not be out of the question because of this either. Or nothing at all.

2.1) Codex + Priests/Monks + EM = so good it's bound to end up on the wiki, and in case of the priest is more powerful and straightforward than many (any?) other approaches. When this happens with vicious rewards, you get people rushing vicious and being frustrated, has happened before. The priest wiki entry is blank, and I could easily jot the basics of the strat down up there, making it the only priest strat someone felt was worth their time writing down in all this time. Think about this. And nerfs are nowhere close to my mind when talking about it.

3) There are no burndayraz hosing mechs in the game. There used to be heavy burndayraz hosing mechs in the game. I used to whine about them a lot. Burndayraz beats everything reliably, in the hands of anyone who knows how to use it well enough. A guide could explain this to anyone interested. Intentional? If yes => fine, if no => whatever happens.

EDIT: Having vicious bosses in subdungeons actually works - DL without piercing wand is difficult to immagine for a BURNDAYRAZ guy, wouldn't be if you could hit him with weakenings. This is why you don't need assassins for sub-vicious vicious token runs, as nothing really gives fireball strats a hard time. I put a few days into testing it and it's true - what it means in the grander shceme of things is beyond me.

4) Devs gennerally know when something is out of line, because they generaly make it so on purpose, or at least suspect something might happen and are interested in what skill/expirience/time investment level this happens at. Or so it seems. Nerfs don't happen because I said so. I'm not arguing in favor of anything, but if the question of "Whteher mysterea needs anything" revolves around being aware of all the options and not being aware of all the options, I'm at least putting some of the options out there, and confirming their potential power level. She was being complained about a lot (even by me), yet she not only supports dedicated spellcasting but is good enough to turn pretty much anyone into a dedicated spellcaster - again, if intentional => we can stop complaining, if not => whatever happens.

EDIT: 5) And I mix it up MORE than most of the guys out there. It's difficult to notice because when I find something that looks suspicios I take it around the block to see if I'm wrong about it or not. If you don't believe, how many people went to stress-test weakening or even use it? How many people walked into CO with a codex priest? And who ever came up with the idea of using the current bloodmage with EM and codex anyway? It's just that when I "discover" something I go "well, this is nice" and move on to the next run and probably discover something else. And I was the guy who whined about the old weakening with the scaling cost being too off putting which is part of a reason why it now has a flat cost and is what it is. Might not even be a bad thing, right?

EDIT no.2: And as for the Absolution nerf hosing dwarves - I knew about absolution healthmonsters, dwarf rogues and dwarf bloodmages, used them, and still went through the game and ended up with a PQI sending me up with dwarves seemingly as often as all other races combined. If "losing" one strat hits them even worse, and if they only worked with stuff that was powerfull enough with anyone else that it doesn't really need dwarves, then they have a big problem and need a straight up buff. Probably. The devs even attempted it at one point, but it fell through, I don't remember how.

Lujo wrote:If "losing" one strat hits them even worse, and if they only worked with stuff that was powerfull enough with anyone else that it doesn't really need dwarves, then they have a big problem and need a straight up buff. Probably. The devs even attempted it at one point, but it fell through, I don't remember how.

IIRC they turned dwarves into damage reduction instead of HP, which was not very balanced for reasons I'm sure you can guess, so it was quickly changed back. My longstanding suggestion has been to change dwarves from level-based HP to fixed, stacking HP (e.g. 1+1 for like 60-70 CP).

Thread up, take it away guys. Lets make it like the absolution nerf never hurt anyone!

I'm actually pretty happy with my suggestion to either buff or keep as is, but have them regen 10% health every time they pop a conversion cap - the way it is now they're the only guys who don't get the benefits of their conversion straight up unless they also regen or blow a potion. Plus, it would give them a small but very hand unique mechanic. Elves have the same problem, but they boost mana, and mana boosts have way more tie-ins than health boosts.